UKHCDO Auditors visit the Edinburgh Haemophilia Centre

Yesterday, our CEO, Dan Farthing-Sykes, was an observer on the team auditing the Edinburgh Haemophilia and Thrombosis Centre.

The Comprehensive Care Centre (CCC) quality reviews are organised by the United Kingdom Haemophilia Centre Doctors’ Organisation (UKHCDO) every three years or so. However, this is the first time the UKHCDO have used an external company to run the process and make them more independent.

The quality review teams are made up of doctors, nurses, patients/parents, and other specialist healthcare professionals. By the time the quality reviews are completed, 35 CCCs across the UK will have been been involved. Edinburgh was the 5th Centre to go through the process this time.

Commenting on the experience of observing the audit, Dan Farthing-Sykes said,

I’ve helped recruit patient and parent for several audits over the years but this is the first time I’ve seen a quality review team in action. I was struck by just how much work goes the team gets through on the day.

All the staff at the Edinburgh Centre had clearly worked incredibly hard to prepare all the paperwork and evidence required to let the team do their work. They were also very open about the areas where they want to improve the service.

The quality reviews team worked incredibly hard too. CCCs offer a wide range of services so there is a lot to look at and a large amount of evidence to go through. The day was conducted at a high pace top make sure everything was looked at properly. It was also clear that having a patient/parent on the team is absolutely vital to the success of the process. I’m now even more grateful to everyone who volunteers to take on this role.

For me one of the most powerful parts of the day was hearing from patients and parents about their experiences of using the Centre. There was a lot people were very pleased about as well as some excellent ideas for how things could be improved for the future.

The quality reviews are a useful reminder of just how committed the Centres are to delivering the best possible service for patients. We are very fortunate to have such dedicated professionals working in the Haemophilia Centres right across Scotland.

Every quality reviews leads to a report which highlights good practice as well as areas where a service can, or should, be improved. Centres find these reports extremely useful in building business cases for making improvements and they often lead to improvements for patients.

The Scottish Haemophilia Centres which are not CCCs (Aberdeen, Dundee, and Inverness) are not reviewed in this process. However, there is a seperate Scottish audit which is conducted just as frequently and includes all the Centres in Scotland. It’s an key principle that everyone in Scotland should be able to access the full comprehensive care package of support so including all the Centres in an audit process is very important.

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Published by Dan Farthing-Sykes

Haemophilia Scotland is a registered charity (No. SC044298) based in Scotland for people who have haemophilia, von Willebrands and other bleeding disorders. We are an organisation for anyone who has these blood-related conditions so we can talk to each other; and we provides a united representative voice when speaking with the medical profession, with government, with the rest of Scottish society, and when connecting with people like us throughout the world.
View all posts by Dan Farthing-Sykes